Turn that crusty console into cash when buying an Alienware system

Alienware just expanded its trade-in program to include current consoles and is willing to pay $200 for your used Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3, or Microsoft Xbox 360 when you purchase a new rig. The timing couldn't be any better, because with both Microsoft and Sony getting ready to launch new consoles next month, the value of these systems has never been lower. Trading in a Nintendo Wii is an especially interesting proposition.

A brand new Nintendo Wii with Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort bundle runs $130. Good luck trying to hawk a used Wii sans bundle for anywhere close to what Alienware is offering. Here are the other models that Dell's boutique arm is willing to accept:

PlayStation 3 "Fat" (minimum 60GB)

PlayStation 3 "Slim" (minimum 120GB)

PlayStation 3 "Super Slim" (minimum 500GB)

Xbox 360 "Slim" (minimum 250GB)

To take advantage of the trade-in offer, you first need to purchase an Alienware system. These machines tend to run higher than non-boutique systems, though you can snag an Alienware X51 small form factor (SFF) gaming rig starting at $699 (read our review of the previous generation model, and check out our autopsy too). After that, visit Alienware's Trade Up Portal to provide a copy of your PC receipt and bank information, then print out the shipping label and send the company your console. Once it arrives and has been inspected, Alienware will initiate a bank transfer for your system's value within 40 days.

Agreed. This is geared toward the tech inept, and makes a compelling idea to those with older consoles that wouldn't mind a gaming PC but don't have the abilities to make it happen. And the x51 box is not too bad, especially for the price.

Wait a minute....you're telling me that this is targeted towards people game on consoles which cost $300-400, who are tech inept and can't tell the difference anyway by pitching a $700 machine to them?

I'll tell you what they see.

"Hmm, this *insert console* plays games, and it's $400. All my friends are getting it too. But this other thing plays games starts at $700 and I have to trade in my console? But what about all the games I have for it?"

It's funny you mention game libraries. Consoles don't seem to support backwards compatibility anymore that I am aware of, and if I've got 30+ games and the new console doesn't support them, then that's $180+ worth of content (assuming brand new titles at $60 each) that I'm out of not including the cost of the previous and new next gen console and the cost of new games to fix the problem.

As far as cost goes, an initial gaming rig is pricey. However most PC gamers don't build a brand new $1K+ rig each year. If anything they spend about ~$300 on a new GPU depending on if they upgrade it.. So really the "costs" are the roughly same without the games in the equation.

And yes, those that are not comfortable building their own will often buy, and a $700 rig that can perform similarly or better than a console for very little more money is a good way to enter into the PC gaming field; and there are also hundreds of free games or extremely inexpensive games out there to get one's fet wet on the new plaform.

However I find it asinine to proclaim a cheap box that has to be thrown away every few years when the new one comes out just to play a game better, when the pc platform has much higher longevity for being able to play titles along with a much broader and more flexible use. Not only that but alot of console games are already ported to the PC, or are in the works.

Yeah, we all know how these post-sale reimbursements go. You buy the machine, spend money to ship in your console, they tell you they're going to give you less than half of what was advertised, and your options are to accept it and get screwed or not accept it and have to pay for them to ship it back to you, i.e., get screwed.

the X51 is the only halfway decent one due to the under $800 cost for what you get. Though mainly you're just paying for the name and the novelties they have. (perfect example is the louvers that open up on top when the fans rev up)

It would be if the name and cool design translated to any resale value. I learned the hard way that it doesn't really. (I had an m15x laptop that was soon after discontinued. It was neat and all but had some serious latency issues. Judging by the threads devoted to that it wasn't just mine either.)

I wasn't really a fan of Alienware, but the SFF X51 came out the exact time I was looking for one. It was a little more than a grand. Core I7, 8GB of Ram, GTX555, Terabyte hard drive. I got it about a year and a half ago before the Ivy Bridge processors were out. I threw a bunch of games at it and tried to max everything out and it never gave me any problems. It's as quiet as a mouse. This thing could be the new standard desktop computer. Everyone complains about it not having an internal power supply, but I think Intel has to keep the power usage within a certain range anyway. Some people are more enthusiastic than I am about it and have tried to max out what they can do with the power supply by installing the latest high end graphics cards. They've been more successful than I thought.